White Lies (20 page)

He returned to the Porsche, slipped behind the wheel, and pulled a U-turn so they were now traveling back toward the direction of Charlie's cabin and Leavenworth. Beside him Katrina was ashen-faced, her arms folded across her chest. She was looking straight ahead. Eventually she said, “Where do we tell everyone we were?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe no one will have noticed we were gone.”

“By the time we get back it will be almost eleven. The bus will be waiting to leave. Surely people will be wondering where we are.”

“I doubt they'll notice my car is gone.”

“So?”

“So we tell them we walked up to the point. Let them fill in the rest.”

She didn't say anything more.

“What's wrong?” he asked her.

“What do you think, Jack?”

“I mean, right now.”

She didn't answer.

“Tell me.”

“Nothing.”

Jack didn't press her. She'd been through a lot. One hell of a lot. And considering the risk that had been involved—that was still involved, at least until they saw how tomorrow unfolded—she was so far handling herself admirably. He didn't know another woman quite like her, and he felt more attracted to her than ever. He reached over and squeezed her thigh reassuringly. He felt her flinch slightly. He let go. Time, he thought. That was all she needed. A little more time.

He shifted into fifth. He was eager to get back to the cabin and thus tempted to speed. But the last thing he wanted was to be written up for speeding, an indisputable record he and Katrina had been near the scene of the crime. He kept up a steady sixty-five miles an hour.

“It's just another lie,” Katrina said quietly as they were passing a rest area.

He glanced at her. “What is?”

“Telling people we were in the bushes making out.”

“Come on, Katrina. In light of the big picture, who cares about that?”

“Don't you see?” she said, and her voice was hard. Cold. “It was a stupid white lie that got me into this whole mess. It led to another lie, and another. And look what's happened!”

“It's the last one.”

“No, it isn't. There's no last one. I know that now. This will follow us around forever.”

“It will be all right,” he said. “Have faith. I know what I'm doing.”

“Shit!” Jack said, slamming on the brakes. The car fish tailed as it skidded to a stop.

Katrina, who had been staring out the side window, snapped her head forward, wondering whether in some cruel twist of irony they'd hit an animal, just as Charlie was supposed to have done. But there had been no impact. Nothing lay sprawled on the road in front of them.

“What happened?” she demanded.

He didn't reply.

“Jack? What is it? What's wrong?”

“I knew I had forgotten something.”

“Know what?” she said, working herself into a panic. “What are you talking about?”

“You stupid, stupid son of a bitch,” he mumbled to himself.

“Jack! You're scaring me. What's wrong?”

He looked at her, as if just registering she was sitting beside him. “The blood,” he said, shaking his head. “I forgot about the blood.”

“What blood?”

“The blood all over Charlie's goddamn face.”

“What about it? You said you knew what you were doing.” She didn't know what he was talking about, but she nonetheless felt as though his supposedly unsinkable plan was springing a gaping leak.

“Back at the truck I smashed the windshield, to make it look like Charlie hit his head, causing the blood. It didn't matter if it was dry, because it would be a while before the cops reached there anyway. But I forgot about the other blood.”

“What other blood?”

“The blood splatter—the blood that was all over my cardigan. Because if he really collided with the windshield, then the blood from his wounds should also be splattered around inside the cab.”

Katrina was silent as she let this new revelation sink in. “Is that really a big deal?”

“Think about it, Katrina. There's a dead man back there in that truck, his face a sheet of blood, which magically didn't get on anything else. Yes, it's a big deal. A big fucking deal. Even these hick cops aren't going to miss that.”

Springing a leak?
she thought, and she felt a crazy laugh bubble up her throat.
It seems we've just hit a goddamn iceberg, Captain
.

“So what does this mean?” she said. “What do we do? What
can
we do—?”

“We have to go back.”

“Absolutely not, Jack! We've been lucky this far. It's not going to last.”

“No cars have come toward us yet. Maybe none have come behind us either.”

“If we go back, we're going to get caught.” She said that as a statement.

“Dammit, Katrina. Not now.”

She felt what little there was left of her self-possession slipping, and she thought she knew how someone standing in the path of a tsunami felt. Hopeless. Like there was nothing you could do to prevent the oncoming disaster.

“We can't go back,” she insisted stubbornly.

“What do you suggest then?” he demanded.

“I don't know. God, I don't know.”

“If someone has stopped, then we keep driving. That's it.”

“And if no one has stopped, what do we do?” she challenged. “Slit our wrists and spray the cab with our own blood?”

“Burn it.”

“The truck?” she said incredulously.

“What else?”

“I don't know about you, Jack, but I've never heard of a car exploding into a ball of flames because of a collision. Maybe in the movies, if one happens to careen off a cliff. But not running into a tree.”

“I'm not talking about a big explosion. Just a fire.”

“You can't just set the seats on fire with your Zippo. Investigators can tell where a fire starts.”

“That's why we make it look like an
engine
fire. Leaking fluids, spilled oil, short circuits, faulty carburetors, catalytic converters— these all start engine fires. And the odds skyrocket during an accident. Usually if a fire breaks out, people turn off the engine and call for help and stop the fire before it gets out of control. That's why you don't hear about it much. But if a fire started, and no one knew about it, and it was allowed to burn, enough heat generated, well, there'd be nothing left but a metal skeleton sitting on melted tires.”

“And if someone comes by and puts it out?”

“How many people do you know who drive around with fire extinguishers in their cars? Rig drivers, maybe. But it wouldn't matter. We just need enough of a fire to tamper with the evidence. That way, even if the cops get suspicious, nothing short of a confession or an eyewitness could convict us.”

Apparently the decision was made, because Jack wheeled the car around and sped back the way they'd come. He pushed the speedometer up over ninety miles an hour. It was the first time she felt the Porsche breaking a sweat. The engine whined like a torpedo and the trees outside flashed past in one continuous blur. It was also the first time she'd seen Jack break a sweat. He wasn't sweating, per se. But he was sitting straight, both hands on the wheels, staring straight ahead, intense, like a man on a mission. That should have been a comforting sight—Jack in control, Jack determined to make everything right—but in truth it freaked her out. Because up until this point, he had been as cool as a cucumber—snappish sometimes, yes—but in general treating the whole situation like someone who knew exactly what he was doing and couldn't do wrong. Seeing him if not nervous then at least concerned was like seeing your pilot searching for a parachute in rough turbulence.

During the suspense-laden trip back to the scene of the accident,
her mind began exploring what would happen if they were caught. Funny enough—or more appropriately, narcissistically enough—it wasn't the jail time she would serve that bothered her the most. It was what everyone she knew would think of her. Old friends back in Seattle. Relatives. Crystal. Even the students she used to teach, and the ones she was just getting to know now— kids who looked up to her as a role model. For the first time since her parents' death, she was glad they were not around. She could not bear them to witness her humiliation and disgrace. Eventually, though, she did begin to wonder about jail time. What was the sentence for covering up a murder? Or, as the lawyers would put it, conspiracy to obstruct justice. Five years in a state prison? Eight? She wasn't sure. But both those sentences seemed like an eternity. Cold cement cell. Tasteless food. Menial jobs. Lack of communication with the outside world. Worse, when she got out she would have a criminal record. She could never teach again. What would she do with herself? There was never anything else she had wanted to do besides teaching.

She glanced at Jack. What would happen to him? Or, specifically, between her and him? She had to be realistic about that. They could write to each other for the first few years. When she got out, she could visit him. But was she just being romantic? Did she really want to spend twenty years visiting a man she could never be with? Never grow old together with? No, she would likely not visit him. Not even once. She would have to make a fresh break. She would have to look for a new man yet again.

Forty-year-old woman, convicted felon, jobless, and more than a little damaged seeks man to settle down with and raise children
.

Yeah, right.

She was going to grow old and die alone—

“You okay?” Jack asked, noticing her eyes on him.

She glanced away, ashamed to be thinking such thoughts. They were not caught. Not yet. They were still very much free. And together. “I'm okay,” she said.

“I hope you're not still thinking we're going to get caught. We're not. We're almost there and there hasn't been a single—”

Up ahead, Katrina made out a set of headlights. She felt as though she'd been punched in the gut with a steel gauntlet. “Someone's there,” she said unnecessarily.

Jack slowed to eighty, then sixty-five, the speed limit. A blue Buick sedan was parked off to the side of the road, beside the crashed pickup truck. A man ran out onto the road, waving his hands. His face was stark white in the headlights. Jack slowed a little more but continued past without stopping. Katrina saw the man's expression morph from distress to disgust.

“He's alone,” Jack said. Before Katrina knew what was happening, he'd looped the Porsche around in a tight turn and was heading back.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “We can't get involved now! We'll have to give a statement. We'll have to explain what we're doing way out here!”

“We're not going to stick around. I'm just going to talk to him.”

Katrina didn't like what she heard in his voice. She didn't know what it was, only that it frightened her. “Keep driving past,” she said.

The man saw them coming back and was waving them over. Jack pulled up behind the Buick. Katrina was furious he'd blatantly ignored her, but there was nothing she could do. He was in the driver's seat.

“Stay in the car,” Jack told her, then climbed out.

Katrina watched him for a moment, then flung the door open and got out as well.

Jack shot her a glance but didn't say anything. He turned his attention to the man, who was short and potato-thick with a weather-seasoned face framed by a red beard and a wild mane of matching hair. “What happened here?” Jack asked, with just the right amount of curiosity and concern.

“Damned if I know,” the man said, stroking his beard nervously. “I went down there to see the damage, give some help, you know. But, sweet Jesus, I'm positive the poor sucker's dead. I didn't find a pulse.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Don't got my phone with me. You got one?”

“No.”

Katrina knew Jack had his phone in his pocket. Her ominous feeling deepened. “Jack,” she said, “come back to the car. We'll go to Skykomish. Get help.”

Jack ignored her once more. “Let's you and me go take another peek,” he said to the man. “Maybe he isn't as dead as you say.”

“I ain't never seen a dead person before. Once or twice in a coffin. No real dead person, you know what I mean? But I'm sure this guy's gone. I told you. I never found a pulse.”

“Let's just make sure.” Jack put a hand firmly on the shorter man's shoulder and guided him toward the crashed truck.

“Jack!” Katrina shouted.

Both men turned to look at her.

“What are you going to do?” she asked cryptically.

“Go back to the car.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Go back to the car, Katrina.” There was an iron timbre to his voice. But she would not be cowed.

“Let's go to Skykomish,” she said. “Get help there. Don't do this.”
Do what
? she wondered.
Kill him? Was that was she was thinking? That Jack was going to kill the man?
She had no idea. She had no idea about anything anymore. Only that she wanted to get the hell away from there—far, far away.

The man with the red hair stiffened. He glanced from Katrina, to Jack, then back to Katrina. He looked like a man who had heard something he wanted no part of. “Maybe I better go for help myself.” He turned toward his car, but Jack tugged him back. He lost his balance and fell to the ground. “Hey!” he protested.

“Shut up!” Jack said.

“Jack!” Katrina cried, taking a few steps forward.
Yes, he was going to do it. She believed that now. He was going to kill that man
.

“I'm not going to say this again,” he told her. “Get back to the car.”

“Don't touch me!” the man gasped, and began scrambling away on all fours. “Stay away!”

Jack started after him, huge and looming, like a polar bear about to pounce on an injured seal. Aware she had only a few seconds to act, Katrina did something she had never done before in her life: she leapt onto a grown man's back, wrapping her arms around Jack's throat. His knees buckled from the added one hundred and twenty pounds, but he didn't go down. Then the next moment she was airborne. He'd shaken her free as if she'd been nothing more than a pesky child. The impact with the ground came fast. She landed in the tall grass and made an “oomph!” sound. She raised her head and was immensely relieved to see she'd provided the man vital seconds to escape. He was back on his feet, charging recklessly into the dark pine forest.